Cardi B: AM I THE DRAMA?

"But Cardi maintains a respectful distance from the prevailing trends. Instead, she plays with bursts of experimentation, adopting new flows without sacrificing legibility. Pretty & Petty" does double duty: The hook is readymade for ubiquity as a TikTok trend while the verses constitute one of the most punishing diss tracks of the year. She practically prances over the beat, a grittier, New York-ified take on the cadences and melodies associated with Mustard 's L.A."

"In the vein of Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us," the apparent glee with which Cardi crushes Boston rapper Bia, four years into an escalating beef, magnifies the effect: "Name five Bia songs, gun pointin' to your head/Baow, I'm dead/That melatonin flow puttin' us to bed/I'm doing you a favor, Epic, run me my bread." As if to prove her point, the song's release coincides with steep exponential growth of Google searches for Bia name. Devastating."

"The album is at its most enjoyable when Cardi is in this prickly mode: "Hello," "Magnet," the 2 Chainz-written "Salute." The bilingual, Dyckman-ready "Bodega Baddie," a turbo-charged merengue bop, makes a promise akin to Rihanna 's mythical reggae album; at under two minutes, it's a brief glimpse at a worthwhile style for Cardi to linger on. It's been a long seven years. Exercises in catharsis abound in the form of heartbreak songs, recorded in the shadow of divorce."

Cardi B navigates a New York rap stylistic shift while retaining distinctiveness through measured experimentation and varied flows. Production primarily by Sean Island and DJ SwanQo grounds the sound. 'Pretty & Petty"' combines a TikTok-ready hook with verses that function as a fierce diss, intensifying a years-long beef with Bia and triggering spikes in searches for Bia. Tracks like 'Hello,' 'Magnet,' 'Salute,' and the bilingual merengue 'Bodega Baddie' showcase grit and playful genre-mixing. Several post-divorce heartbreak songs pursue catharsis but often land as generic, sung rap ballads. The album shows strengths when Cardi embraces confrontational, prickly modes.

Read at Pitchfork